2014_0811_CCpacket - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

REQUEST FOR COUNCIL ACTION Date: 8-11-14 Item No.: 13.f ___________________________________________________________________________________ Department Approval City Manager Approval ____________________________________________________________________________________ Item Description: Authorize a Joint Fiber Optic Installation Project ____________________________________________________________________________________ 1 BACKGROUND 2 Since 2002, the City has capitalized on a number of opportunities to install fiber optic communication lines 3 to connect City, School District and Library facilities. The fiber optic communication system is necessary 4 to provide for fast and secure data connections between public facilities in and near Roseville. Working 5 with other government entities, the City is able to share the cost of operating and maintaining a fiber optic 6 network as well as provide telecommunication and data services to Roseville Area School District 623 and 7 Ramsey County Library System. 8 9 The current City Fiber Network (CFN) consists of approximately 9.7 miles of fiber connecting 19 City, 10 County and School District buildings (Diagram A). The CFN provides direct point-to-point private network 11 links between public facilities at 1,000 megabits per second (Mbps) data transfer speeds. The Roseville CFN 12 is directly connected to a similar fiber network owned and operated by the City of North St. Paul. 13 Collectively the combined network serves a portion of the data connectivity needs for the Metro-INET 14 Technology Consortium. 15 16 The joint projects over the past 10 years concentrated on connecting public facilities that did not have access 17 to the Comcast provided Institutional Network (INET). The City, School District and Library system relied 18 heavily on the Comcast INET for inter-building network connectivity. The use of the Comcast network is 19 granted by the City's competitive local cable television franchise agreement. In 2006, Federal 20 Communications Commission (FCC) rulings limited the ability of the local franchise authority (LFA) to 21 require provisioning of INET in the cable franchise agreement. 22 23 The City franchise agreement with Comcast expired in 2013 and is currently under an extension. It was hoped 24 that the continued INET would be included in the renewal under the same favorable terms so the construction 25 to the remaining buildings had been delayed. However in the ongoing renewal discussions Comcast has not 26 agreed to the continued use of INET at no cost. To insure continuity of business services absent the use of the 27 INET, it has become necessary to complete the next phase of the City telecommunications plan and extend 28 fiber optics to the few remaining buildings using Comcast INET. 29 30 To date, all major City facilities are connected to City-owned fiber while all but two Roseville Area School 31 District buildings are connected. The remaining school facilities include Emmett D. Williams Elementary and 32 Little Canada Elementary. Attachment 1 lists the connected facilities. 33 12 Page of